Open Country Club Meeting Closes the Season

North Shore Towers held an Open Country Club meeting on Wednesday, October 15, detailing finances and talking about the sponsored membership, among other issues.
As the meeting opened, Country Club Committee chair Jim Short and representatives from the golf and tennis associations extended their gratitude to those who contributed to the successful season, include committee members, the Country Club staff and management.
While giving his report, Towers Men’s Golf Association (TMGA) president Ed Vesel spoke about the contract of Golf Professional Bob Guido, which had been debated at the beginning of the season. Guido has now renewed his contract for three years.
Vesel also encouraged Country Club members to recommend people for the sponsored membership. This past season there was a family membership that has been expanded for next season to include close friends of residents.
“We’ve had some response,” Vesel said, estimating that between 25 and 30 applicants are being screened. “People who are residents here have recommended friends and relatives. We are doing well.”
Tennis Association co-president Annalies Karp said that the sponsored membership is also available for tennis.
Karp also said that there were three new members to the Tennis Association board and that they have already started to make plans for the 2009 season.
“The year ended up phenomenal,” Karp said of the 2008 season. “We had great events.”
In highlighting the past season for the Towers Ladies’ Golf Association (TLGA), Bernice Mittman spoke about the Babe Zaharias tournament and card party that was held to benefit the American Cancer Society. She said that next year they are hoping to establish a tree of life and would like all residents to participate in it, also noting that “we’re looking forward to a forest.”
“We already have our plans for next year and are looking forward to having our new members come also to participate,” she said.
North Shore Towers Controller Robert Serikstad first went over a hand out of the membership levels at the Country Club.
“As you can see from this exhibit, the total number of members is fairly constant,” Serikstad said. “The general membership has risen in conjunction with the mandatory membership.”
However, Serikstad pointed out that there has been a decline in golf membership, although the issue is being addressed through the sponsored membership. In 2007, there were 327 golfers. That number dropped to 285 for 2008.
Serikstad then focused on the finances of the Country Club.
“In the current budgetary year, we’re looking at running approximately $61,000 and possibly a little more behind budget for the calendar year,” he said.
This is in part attributed to the less than projected golf membership, Serikstad said, adding that they “missed the mark by about $140,000 on that measure.” However, he said that as a conservative measure for next year, they budgeted the same amount of golfers even though they expect to get more through the sponsored membership.
The budgeted revenues for 2009 are $2,875,000 with the operating expenses being $2,740,000. This would create a surplus of $135,000.
For next year, $119,000 has been allotted for capital improvements. This breaks down to $43,000 for golf carts, $15,000 for golf course hole renovations, $15,000 for golf cart path paving, $13,000 for grounds equipment, $10,000 for computers/software, $10,000 for exercise equipment, $10,000 contingency and $3,000 for pool/card room furniture.
Finally, Serikstad explained that there has been an increase in membership dues. Dues were increased three percent and then rounded up to the nearest $25.
The dues for 2009 will be $1,000 for a general membership, $300 for a house membership, $1,850 for tennis and $4,000 for golf.
During the question and answer period, a resident asked what the ideal amount of golfers would be and suggested putting up a chart to show how the Country Club is doing with membership from one month to the next.
Short said that the goal is to get between 35 and 45 new members.
“We thought that we could easily accommodate that. We thought that we really didn’t want to inconvenience or impact negatively on any of the members who are now here,” Short said. “We want these new members to support the club, we want them to support financially us going forward and having a first quality Country Club here and golf program.”
With the new members, Short said the total would be about 250 to 275, although the Country Club thinks it “could easily accommodate 300.” He said they want to take the process slow to ensure that current and new members all have a good experience.”
“I think our ideal number is somewhere in that 325, 350 [range],” Guido said.
Another resident said that it seemed like $10,000 for gym equipment seemed small considering the amount of people who use it. Short explained that during the budget process the various managers are asked to submit what they need.
“It’s a long process,” Short said. “We try to do the best that we can through it. If you have some things that you feel are lacking in the gym, then certainly bring them to our attention…”
The toxic plume study by Lockheed Martin was also brought up. North Shore Towers General Manager Glen Kotowski said that extensive work has been done on the issue and noted that the plume is to the east of the Towers property.
Kotowski said that Lockheed Martin drilled two test wells near the seventh and ninth golf holes at the end of 2007 at their own expense to test how the plume has spread. The results were that “the water is basically safe and they feel they would be able to drill at that location.”
Although there were delays because of dealing with two different divisions of the Environmental Protection Agency, Kotowski said the application has been submitted to drill the wells and that the goal is to have them pumping by next April.
In regards to the sponsored membership, questions were raised about if they would have the same access to other facilities such as the pool and gym. Even though they will have full access, Country Club Manager Mary Anne Langone said that the applications have the potential new members check what facilities they’re interested in using and the majority are only interested in golf. She also said they will be keeping an eye on usage.
It was also suggested that the sponsored members potentially pay more than resident members. Vesel said the reason this wasn’t done was because they felt
if they could interest people to come in at the same level then the hope was that they would become a part of the community.
In addition, they wanted to keep prices competitive.